Page 116 of Lady of Starfire (Lady of Darkness #5)

She stumbled as she climbed the steps, her boots slick with sand and blood.

Somehow, she only met one soldier in the stairwell, and he was so surprised to see her, she easily sank her sword into his gut.

He was falling down the stairs as she continued up.

She had been right. There were two archers inside.

The Fae archer she handled fairly easily, her smaller form still allowing her to dart around his more muscled body and strike from behind.

The other, however, was a Night Child, and while Talwyn was yanking her sword out of the Fae, the vampyre was sinking fangs into her throat.

She cried out, lurching backwards and slamming the Night Child into the wall behind her, but that just caused the fangs to sink in further.

And holy gods, the agony in her being as the vampyre drank and drank.

Her knees gave out first, hitting hard when they cracked against the stone floor.

Her limbs were heavy, her vision going blurry.

Which is why it took her so long to realize she still gripped her dagger.

With the last of her strength, she struck, lodging it deep into the vampyre’s skull.

He went limp against her. Talwyn didn’t have the energy to push him off, slumping to the ground beneath his heavier body.

Someone would find her. Azrael would find her.

That’s what she kept telling herself. It was the only way she kept herself sane as she lay there beneath a dead Night Child, unable to do anything.

The sounds of battle carried up to her. The clashing of swords. The pounding of feet and flapping of wings. The cries of wrath and the screams of the dying.

Then she heard Azrael’s bellowed commands over it all. Yelling at his forces to turn their godsdamn weapons on the Night Children.

His forces. Not Tarek’s.

If his warriors had recognized that he still held the royal seat and not Tarek, it would change everything. She just needed to wait for someone to find her.

She tried to free an arm to at least attempt to staunch the bleeding at her throat where the vampyre’s fangs had left a jagged tear. Wiggling as much as she could, she finally worked a hand free just as the body was shoved off of her.

Thank the gods.

But it wasn’t muddy brown eyes staring down at her.

They were pale green ones.

And that was dark golden skin and black hair hanging in a face she had spent countless days and nights with.

“Oh, Moonflower,” Tarek sighed, his tone full of a disappointed remorse as he lowered to a crouch beside her. “This is not how things were supposed to go.”

Talwyn was in too much shock to comprehend that he had reached out and gripped her chin, tilting her head to the side to look at the wound.

It wasn’t until the flash of blue from the ring on his finger caught her eye that she realized he was touching her, but it wasn’t as if she could do anything about it.

Tarek clucked his tongue. “You could have had everything, and now you are …this.” The disdain was clear as his eyes dragged over her.

“When I heard you had become as powerless as a mortal, I hadn’t believed it.

Then I saw you fighting from where I watched on a balcony.

Still cutting down enemies with the same viciousness you always had, but there was no wind or earth magic.

No bolts of energy or shifting to a wolf.

So foolish. No heir left behind. Even if I left you alive, you couldn’t produce one now anyway.

Azrael cannot have you and leave his Court without an heir.

Such an utter waste. The female I knew would have never sacrificed her power, her birthright.

You were a queen , Talwyn. Now you will die as nothing. ”

And it made sense. That this was how she would ultimately die.

That Tarek would be the one to do it after he was the one who had sufficiently blinded her to everything that should have mattered.

That she would die alone and unable to fight back.

She’d like to think she could take Tarek out with her, but she knew she couldn’t.

“You have nothing to say before your death?” Tarek asked, drawing a dagger from a sheath at his belt.

“Did you know?” she rasped out, unsure why she needed to know the answer to this question so badly.

Tarek paused, his head tilting a little at the question. “Did I know what?”

“That Azrael was my twin flame?”

“Oh, that.” He smiled softly, reaching out to brush hair from her face.

“You feeling the stirrings of that bond with him is what helped me convince you it was me.” She winced at his touch, and he gave her a pitying frown.

“You did love me at one point, Talwyn. We did share that, even if it wasn’t a twin flame bond. ”

“You stole it from me,” she said in a harsh whisper.

Tears welled in her eyes, because while she knew she should feel the most guilt over turning against her people or being so godsdamn foolish to believe she was owed some type of revenge, her greatest regret in this life was that she had failed Azrael so completely by choosing Tarek over him.

“I stole nothing. You gave it willingly,” Tarek replied, turning the dagger idly in his hand.

“Eager and focused on what you wanted, it wasn’t all that difficult.

It took time, of course. Decades of tenacity.

But in the end …” He shrugged. “It would have been worth it if you hadn’t lost sight of what was yours for the taking. ”

“You will not survive this war,” she said, forcing the tears not to fall. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. “Scarlett will win, and you will be in the After before the end of it.”

“We shall see,” he said, a half-grin tilting on his lips.

He raised the dagger, and Talwyn squeezed her eyes shut.

Peaceful things are probably what she should have been filling her thoughts with, but all she could think about was failing Azrael yet again.

Of failing the people once entrusted to her.

Of abandoning a griffin after she’d demanded he didn’t do the exact same thing to her.

But a strangled, gasping sound had her eyes snapping open before the blade touched her skin.

There were vines around Tarek’s throat, thick and full of thorns. Blood was dripping down his neck where they dug into his skin. The ground was vibrating beneath her, and with the vampyre body off of her, she was able to push onto her elbows.

To find Azrael.

There was nothing but feral rage on the Earth Prince’s face as he stalked into the small lookout room.

Tarek scrambled for his magic, but Azrael was stronger, more powerful.

Always had been. It was why the Ordos family had been overthrown by the Luans.

It was why Tarek had come up with this elaborate scheme in the first place.

Two sharp wooden stakes appeared in Azrael’s hands.

He hadn’t even looked at her yet, the entirety of his focus on the male who had fallen forward onto his knees.

Tarek’s hands were bloody and ripped to shreds as he clawed at the vines around his throat.

There were slices on his face and neck where he’d tried to cut them away with the dagger in his hand.

When he saw Azrael advancing, something flickered in his eyes.

So much malice shone in them, and as if understanding he would not survive this, he spun.

And plunged the dagger deep into her torso, right below her ribs.

Azrael’s roar of fury was muffled as she collapsed back down, a hand moving too slowly to her side.

Tarek was ripped away from her, and then he was hanging on the wall with two stakes shoved through his chest, his feet dangling off the ground.

Azrael left him there, dropping down beside her, leaves swirling away nearby carrying a message off to someone.

A hand slipped beneath her head, lifting it up.

“Talwyn,” he said in a low command. “Keep your eyes open. Do you understand?”

But she’d lost too much blood between the fighting, the Night Child, and now the stab wound. She could feel his magic wrapping around her, trying to hold her together.

“Az,” she whispered.

“No,” he said sharply. No room for argument. Just like always. “You deserve to live, Talwyn. You will live.”

She lifted a shaky hand, laying it atop the one pressed to her side. “I am sorry I did not love you better.”

“You have decades to make it up to me,” he said, his hand sliding around her head to smooth back her hair. “Help is coming.”

She didn’t want one of the last things she said to him to be how there was no helping her. Not anymore. So instead she said, “I’ll meet you on a battlefield beyond the Veil, Az.”

Darkness closed in around her as breathing became a little harder. There were these sharp stabbing pains in her chest with each inhale, and her exhales felt murky and stilted. Like the air couldn’t get all the way out.

But then the darkness receded.

Not darkness.

Shadows.

Scarlett stood before her, a hand on Azrael’s shoulder as she dropped down beside him.

That was good. That his queen had come to be with him when he faced this. That he wouldn’t be alone.

Scarlett looked down at her. A queen with every right to hate her with all that she was. A descendant of the God of Endings and a goddess of her own making.

She held up a hand, darkness crackling with embers of white. There was blood smeared across her face and hands. Her spirit sword was sheathed down her back. Her lips were moving, but Talwyn couldn’t hear her. That was fine. She wanted the last voice she heard to be Azrael’s.

Az was nodding, and then Scarlett’s silvery, glowing gaze connected with Talwyn’s. Her features were softer than Talwyn had ever seen them as she said, “You’ve given enough, Talwyn.”

Darkness engulfed her, but it wasn’t the darkness of the After. Or maybe it was. She really had no way of knowing in the chaos that danced around her. A sudden flare of bright white light had her slamming her eyes shut, and when she blinked them open, Azrael was hovering over her.

“Talwyn?” There was strained hope in his voice that she had never heard before. Fingertips brushed along her cheekbone. “Say something.”

“If you followed me to the After, I am going to kill you,” she croaked.

Azrael huffed a breath of laughter, bringing his brow to hers. His eyes fell closed, and this close, she realized there were tear tracks cutting through the grime on his face. She lifted a hand to cup his cheek, but froze when she saw the black Mark on the back of her hand.

Her right hand.

Directly in the center. No bigger than a coin.

“What is this?” she demanded, trying to push herself up.

“Go slow,” Azrael ordered, helping her into a sitting position.

Scarlett was still here, standing back and giving them this moment.

“What is this?” Talwyn repeated, turning her head to look at Azrael’s hand, where a matching Mark stood out against his brown skin.

“It is not a twin flame Mark,” Scarlett said. “Not even a goddess can restore that. But it is a Binding Mark of a sort. I didn’t know if it would work. I sort of had to combine some elements from other Marks to make this one, but …” Her eyes darted to Azrael. “He wanted to risk it.”

“What is the cost?” Talwyn demanded.

Scarlett gave her a small, soft smile. “It binds your lives together, Talwyn.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Absolutely not. His life does not get cut short because of me. No.”

“It was a cost I am willing to pay, Talwyn,” Azrael said, trying to guide her face to his.

“No,” she cried again. “No, no, no. This is not—”

“I may have taken some liberties with the creation of this particular Mark,” Scarlett cut in, and they both turned back to her. She was studying Tarek’s corpse as if it were a fine piece of art as she continued. “It binds your life to his, Talwyn. As long as Azrael lives, you cannot die.”

“A mortal body cannot survive for decades longer than it should,” Talwyn argued.

“Which is why your Staying will not fade. I ensured it,” Scarlett answered.

“How?” Azrael demanded, his mouth slack in as much shock as Talwyn was feeling.

Scarlett simply shrugged, reaching up and slipping the ring from Tarek’s finger before his body went up in white flames.

“I have enough Chaos to share a spark. It will not give her magic, and it will not restore any of her other gifts. That sacrifice must remain for Sorin’s sake, but it will allow her to maintain her Staying.

A gift of thanks. To both of you. For what you sacrificed and lost in all of this. ”

Scarlett was gone in the next blink, and Talwyn found herself crushed in Azrael’s embrace against his hard chest. She was numb with shock, nearly limp against him.

He tilted her chin up to look down into her eyes. “Say something, Talwyn.”

“I love you, Az.”

It was the first time she’d said those words to him. She wished that wasn’t the case. She wished he’d heard them from her so many times, he could never doubt the truth behind them.

She’d make sure he knew now. For the rest of their years together.

His mouth crashed into hers, somehow intense and calming all at once. Just as he had always been for her.

And as she clung to him, she remembered how to dream.